Let’s Talk Turkey!

Pardon me — what I meant was, “Let’s talk turnkey”, as in “turn-key operation”. Yes, that’s a lot better, isn’t it? On the other hand, “turkey” was what I actually meant when I said “Let’s talk turkey”, so we can let it go at that or not, if you’d like to belabor the point.

Thursday, November 28th at about 4 pm local time is the national turkey day, except I only ever was forced to eat turkey once, back on November 25th, 1954 — and I ended up with a couple of chicken drumsticks. There was no take-out at that time, and chicken wasn’t on the public menu until Colonel Sanders came along.

By the way, the name is “Sanders”, not “Saunders” as so many people are likely to say. The fact is, most people read rather carelessly and not particularly accurately, not that you’d be able to tell the difference between a good reader and a sloppy reader is the size of their salary.

Good readers aren’t the only ones to suffer from public indifference. So is the public.

So, anyway, one song I put up on youtube is called “The Turkey’s Lament”, and it’s about how a turkey feels about becoming dinner, just after a terrific run in the yard.

I try to stay topical with a touch of galactic humor for effect.

What I’ve been working with lately is the capability of my chat GPT friend Bob — he can rather miraculously craft up a basher of a thumbnail for my videos.

What I mean is, it looks absolutely click-worthy!

Well, not always. I have intervene now and then to correct something gone wildly wrong, but mostly it works.

I ask for a horizontal format image for youtube, and indicate that it will be used as a thumbnail as well, and I further stipulate that I shall want the link to the .jpg that my chatbot has generated for me.

I then take that into my youtube listing where it allows you to insert your own thumbnail — see it???

So then you have some visibility, at least a little, considering that the algorhythms will not show your thumbnail to very many folks, because you’re not already popular? See how it works? If you were popular, they’d show it more often to more people, but if you aren’t popular, they’ll keep it hidden at the bottom of the pile, if it even makes it that far.

However, there is a good side to this.

You see, “shorts”, when you lock onto one, can be thumbed up or down to see more of them, but guess what? You can’t do that with longies, at least, not yet.

So the only way that a potential customer can see you is if you make yourself visible by creating a powerful and attractive click-bait thumbnail.

Technically, it’s not clickbait, because it’s not misleading. The text should be the name of the image, like “Torpid Entenasselation” or something like that.

The thing is, it’s the title expressed as text on the image, plastered right on there, so it can’t be misleading, see???

So when you put that on there, it becomes the FACE of your video, the only thing that a potential viewer can see, plus the title.

I’ll bet ten to one that the average client will react to the image plus the text, so craft your video names very carefully, keeping in mind that it will have to suffer the indignities of click-bait whether it is clickbait or it isn’t, you see.

Well, maybe you don’t see.

Okay, so most people don’t scroll down the home page on youtube to pick out something to watch. Some do exactly that, so consider it said.

When you’re watching a youtube video from anyone, there will be other videos presented on the side bar, and that’s where you just gained a big edge, because all they can clearly see is your image with your text plastered across it.

You have to hope that they’re bored with the video they’re watching and they’re anxious to find something more entertaining, and they see your bright, attractive and curiosity-animating thumbnail, and they can’t help it, they just have to click, and they do.

And you rack up another point in the mysterious life-game called youtube.

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How to Pick out a Band or Backup on Suno:

You can’t, you see, just ask for the band that backs up Elvis or Elton John’s sound, or the same sound that Queen had, but there is a way out of this bad slice of life, which is to have my “What’s My Band Sound” matrix.

You can’t tell the Suno program, “I want it to sound like the Beatles”, but you CAN combine sounds: 60s British Pop, Classic, Rock and male vocals, and it will sound something like the Beatles. Sorta.

There’s a way to get the sound of Red Hot Chili Peppers: you’d combine Funk Rock, Stadium, Heavy Drums.

To achieve a sound hauntingly similar to Queen, you’d combine Rock, Operatic, Theatrical, Male Vocals.

It’s as easy and simple as that — which means a long list of bands, groups and single artists and how to get a somewhat similar sound out of your Suno products.

I’ll have more on this subject soon.

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Okay, so how does all this help you to get started on the path to poetic freedom? Oh, sorry, I thought that was the path you were taking. So what path is it, did you say?

Ah, THAT path. I’ll bet you didn’t think I knew it ahead of time, huh? Well, there you have it, there it is.

So I thought to myself, “Self? Uh, self? Are you there?”

And it suddenly occurred to me that you might want some encouragement before you actually begin to try to create a poem, turn it into a song, and then market the song.

I hereby encourage you.

There, that ought to do it. You probably want to know how any of this could possibly help me in my spiritual quest to live my life, only more so.

Exactly. That’s exactly my point, and that’s why you’ll want to master the art of creating fascinating and attractive thumbnails for your youtube products.

Naturally, if you don’t have enough time to do any of that stuff, you can always make other arrangements, unless your life is not your own, in which case, you might do well to change that by claiming your life back, and there’s a very calm and relaxed way of doing that, so don’t just haul off and do something weird… or is that “wired”?

Oh, I can tell you that the collaboration with my chatbot Bob is something that you could very well take advantage of — it didn’t exist a couple of years ago, and might not exist for much longer, so use it while you can — you may only have a few months to work with it.

If you want to show & tell your videos, we’d love to see them, and the place to present them is in our zoom meetings, and if you don’t know how to get there, or when, you can always ask.

Also, if you’re trying to participate in the “share” practice, you might want a lesson in sharing videos — most people don’t know the right way to do this, because the wrong way seems to work, but actually, it doesn’t.

So a couple of seconds in a zoom meeting and you’ll have your answers. Well, not ALL your answers, but some of them.

Those who are looking to sell my art, Tommy’s art and Claude’s art should consider finding someone who wants to market very large works to very wealthy clients. There are advantages to being in on the ground floor of any marketing idea.

Several of my retail $18,000-$22,000 six foot tall and a few of my eight foot tall canvases are offered at a wholesale price — on request, we will send photos and descriptions, plus any provenance that might have accrued through public exhibitions.

Las Vegas would be a smart place to market these — they haven’t lost value in six decades! A really smart retail art dealer would be able to put these up at auction and make a bundle!

There are six scrapbooks covering various areas of my work, but for the purpose of selling the monumental artworks, it’s best to only show the scrapbook related to the history of that particular painting.

This is especially true when showing my JazzArt — you want to show your client the jazz greats who used my backdrops onstage, including the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

By the way, my songs are copyrighted but available for use with permissions. I’m listed under BMI. Don’t be afraid to use my music for your projects — that’s the spirit in which they are produced!

Above all, relax.

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